If you listen to the young crowd, 2002 may as well be ancient history. Not quite the “mythic age” of the late 90s where legendary heroes like Cowboy Bebop and Evangelion traipsed around the countryside, but the early 00’s may as well be set in Byzantine Rome in the eyes of “modern” fans.

So let’s take a look at the awesomeness that was airing on wall of bath houses while those Romans were doing their orgy thing.

10. Please Teacher!

Yeah, I don’t buy that “oh, he’s really over 18, he just looks young because of some mystery anime sleeping diseaseshit. Please Teacher is all about that fantasy of scoring with that one hot teacher almost every teenager has at some point in high school. And it’s totally OK because she’s an alien! Your fantasies are totally legal, dude, and they’re even more exotic! Score! It’s pretty baffling that this series ended up being watchable, much less pretty decent. A lot of that comes from the side characters. Their issues and relationships are far more interesting than anything that happens to the dream couple. And the whole thing has a decent sense of humor to it. But yeah, dude, you’re not an adult. Stop lying to the audience like that.

9. Haibane Renmei

I don’t love this series. It just doesn’t do it for me the way it hits those buttons for other people. Redemption stories aren’t what I’m interested in. I don’t get the same warm fuzzies other people get when they see someone overcome those sorts of personal odds. I’m weird like that. What interests me is the actual world that’s created in this series. It’s a cool take on Purgatory. It may be a bit too idyllic for my tastes, but the series does a great job of crafting this image of a pastoral world with just a hint of sinisterness lurking about. In a way, it’s something of a miracle that this series even makes it onto one of my lists. It’s way too nice for me.

8. GetBackers

GetBackers is similar to Heat Guy J in that I hated its first episode. I also hated its second episode. I was all but forced to watch the third. And that third episode was pretty cool. And then after that the series became kinda awesome. It has insane characters with insane powers, and said characters get into insane action scenes and shit. That’s about it. It’s shallow shounen action. It isn’t nearly as good as something like Air Master. But it has characters with names like Mr. No Breaks. Seriously. That’s one of my favorite anime character names ever. A getaway driver named Mr. No Breaks, whose “poweris that he never uses the breaks. That’s some brilliant character stuff there. That one character represents everything I like about this series.

7. Chobits

One of my earlier posts compared this thing to Blade Runner. Not so much in terms of quality or anything, but in terms of the whole “just how human is an AIthing. Yeah, it probably isn’t relevant anymore to ask if artificial intelligence is real intelligence. Fiction’s weighed in on that enough to where the assumption is pro-AI. Chobits then asks “can you do all that other stuff you do with an equal human intelligence with an AI.The result is something that’s kinda creepy, but it’s kinda fascinating in that sort of “CLAMP has some weird fucking tastesway.

6. Trava: Fist Planet

Call it a dress rehearsal for Redline. It hits a lot of the same buttons as that awesome movie, except we see everything through the eyes of a couple of slacker salvagers. It isn’t the sort of “against the oddsstory like Redline. It’s more of a world-building piece where the creators are setting and exploiting the boundaries of the anime’s universe. It’s kinda inconsequential, I guess, but it’s a hell of a lot of fun and stylish.